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Amidodon-type capped petrified lizard

Petrified lizards

A standard unit for artillery units in the Imperial Defense Forces, the Petrified Lizard is a self-propelled field gun designed to provide medium and long-range artillery support to the front line. The Pen, Fun, and Pavilion www.biquge.info mount a ground-shaking cannon on a fully functional and easy-to-build Kemera chassis, and while the corps will be equipped with other artillery pieces, such as the Manticore missile vehicle, the self-propelled griffin heavy mortar, or even the heavy bombardment siege artillery, the Petrified Lizard is the absolute workhorse of each artillery regiment. While all the other weapons have their own strengths, the Petrified Lizard is a universal oil and is mostly used for long-range artillery strikes. The Petrified Lizard retains almost exactly the basic characteristics of the Kemera, such as the engine, suspension, etc., but with a crew compartment at the rear of the open-top weapon platform, protected by an armored shield on the gun.

Inside the petrified lizard, there is a driver and a commander, who also operates the vehicle's heavy explosives for self-defense. Artillery crews consisting of gunners and loaders were located behind the platform for fighting. The loader loads the heavy shell into the excitation port of the gun, while the gunner fires the earth-shaking cannon at the command of the commander.

The main task of the petrified lizard is to suppress enemy units for front-line troops. They are guided by the company's forward artillery scouts or other trained high-ranking commanders to direct firing positions. For most missions, they use high-explosive warheads, but there are some special ammunition that are often distributed to petrified lizard units, such as smoke grenades, incendiary bombs, or swaying grenades that light up the night battlefield. The Earthshaker is a 132mm caliber gun capable of firing shells at a speed of 814 mps at a distance of 15 km.

Due to their power, they can easily destroy enemy vehicles, strongholds, or buildings. Petrified Lizards are often called upon to provide immediate additional firepower to combat units, and the lower angle of the Earthshaker allows them to act as assault guns on the battlefield, causing great damage at close range. Of course, it is not considered a main battle tank, it lacks armor and is open-topped, making it vulnerable to enemy assaults, so it can only be seen as a support role. If used as an assault gun, the gun would be divided from the original artillery company under the command of a tank company or an iron fist company.

The Petrified Lizard has an enclosed variant, such as the Amigidodon, which adds an enclosed compartment for the crew. However, petrified lizards enclosed in heavy armor cannot use level 6 and 7 ammo, and can only use standard level 5 ammo, due to the effect of recoil. This, of course, affects the maximum range of the enclosed petrified lizard, which is not as good as the open-top type.

Famous feats such as on Taros are that the Taran Legions used a variety of Amidodon-type petrified lizards. The 12th Panzer Corps used them as assault guns, deployed directly in tank companies to counter the Titanium Empire's long-range railguns, causing the aliens to suffer huge losses in the open field. While this was a successful approach, and there were several confirmed results, it did not have the thick front armor of the main battle tank, which the Titans quickly spotted and used a light vehicle carrying homing missiles, such as the Motfish or Piranha, to attack the artillery unit once it was spotted. This inflicted huge losses on the Empire, and also deprived the original artillery company of enough firepower to provide the long-range artillery bombardment that it was good at.

Imperial Guard artillery series

Open-top Medusa

Imperial Guard artillery series

Amicidodon capped Medusa

Medusa siege artillery

Siege warfare was largely the same in the 41st millennium. Many rebels and heretics will look for thick walls in cities or fortresses to cover themselves. The Imperial Guard, on the other hand, were well prepared to deal with this tactic, as few walls were hard enough to withstand the Medusa siege cannons.

Instead of firing arc cannonballs around walls like griffons, it uses heavy cannonballs to pierce walls directly, turning them into ruins for infantry to break through.

The bombardment of siege guns will be heard continuously during a long siege, and they will shell day and night in dug and well-protected positions. Once a breach is formed, Medusa will rush forward to continue to provide cover for infantry and destroy structures that may harbor ambushes. The ensuing devastating street-by-street shelling will sweep away all areas that might harbor the enemy.

The Medusa was considered an extremely ancient weapon, and certainly not considered a must-have in armored forces. Its artillery range is not as far as that of bombardment, manticore, and petrified lizards, and its armor is not as thick as that of the Smasher or Thundercatcher. As a result, Medusa is no longer a standing vehicle of the Imperial Guard. They are only deployed when there is a lack of Crushers in the fight against extremely hard fortresses. An armored corps will usually have a group of Medusa as a reserve, but most commanders will try to avoid deploying them on the front line.

Medusa has been tried in other tactical roles, but never really succeeded. Its short-range shells cannot be used as conventional artillery. It was deployed to support infantry, but its open-top structure meant that the crew was a live target in close combat. Both the Smasher and the Thundercatcher are more desirable options.

Other disadvantages of Medusa include the lack of ammunition. The size of its heavy shells limited it to 18 rounds. However, in siege warfare this is not a problem for supply lines that are constantly being transported to the trenches. But in the open field, Medusa could not fight for long.

Imperial Guard artillery series

Hydra anti-aircraft tank

The Hydra based on the Kemera chassis is a special mobile anti-aircraft fire. Commonly used to provide anti-aircraft fire to the marching and artillery positions of the Imperial Defence Forces, the tank's long automatic cannon swept the sky with a high rate of fire and released a wall of fire with high-explosive warheads. The Hydra's turret is equipped with tracking and aiming equipment, and is auto-rotating, meaning that once a local air target is locked, the gun will continue to aim at the target, ignoring any evasive maneuvers from it. With the Hydra's high rate of fire, the air target is usually destroyed.

Hydras are usually equipped in the air defense companies of a corps, but they can be seen in almost all companies. The presence of a company is only a managerial convenience, and as a squad, even individual vehicles are often divided out to provide more effective air defense support. The demands of Hydra never stop, so commanders who lack resources must think carefully about where to allocate effective resources. Artillery is often the preferred recipient of aid, as they are always the primary target for enemy air strikes, and many petrified lizard formations will have at least one Hydra.

Tank companies on the front line can also be targeted by air strikes without the protection of the Hydra, so there is always a Hydra watching over the convoy as the queue moves forward. If the Hydra is not in place, then other methods may be used, such as using the Extinguisher or using Kemera and other modified vehicles.

The second level to be protected are command units and important supply lines, but only a fixed Hydra platform is sufficient for these locations, and there is no need to use the precious mobile Hydra.

The Hydra is a five-person crew. The driver, commander, and communicator sat in the main compartment, with the one sandwiched between the two operating a heavy bomb, while the gunner and loader sat in the turret to control the Matrix Autogun.

When the danger of air strikes decreases, the Hydra usually conducts operations against ground targets on the continuation of the front line. Its long range and powerful firepower make it very effective against infantry attacks and light vehicles. Because it was so effective, the top commanders of the Imperial Defence Force turned a blind eye to this violation of official regulations.

Imperial Guard artillery series

bombardment

The Bombardment is currently the largest and heaviest siege gun in the Imperial Guard. Unlike other mobile guns using the Kemera chassis, the bombardment was equipped on the heavier Riemannrus chassis. The heavily rebuilt chassis was able to carry the weight of the siege mortar. However, even with these modifications, the bombardment still moves very slowly. The engine and tracks, although they gave the weapon some mobility, were not self-propelled guns in the true sense of the word, and could not fire on the march.

The entire crew of the bombardment had only one driver. The rest of the gunners were carried in the transporter behind. Most of the time when the gunner aimed, the gun was already loaded. Loading for bombardment is a time-consuming process, and each shell is so heavy that it cannot be lifted by a single person. The bombardment comes with a small crane to fill it.

Bombardment, which lacks mobility and takes a lot of time to reload, is uncommon in the deployment of the front. Due to these limitations, bombardment should only be used against fixed strongholds, such as forts or mutinous cities. Once deployed, the bombardment group will continue to bombard the target, with heavy shells whizzing across the sky and quickly destroying buildings, walls, and strongholds.

Other features of the bombardment include its huge recoil shovel, which is inserted deep into the ground to cushion the enormous recoil caused by the shelling. The bombardment does not come with any self-defense weapons against melee enemies, but it can still be equipped with a coaxial weapon.

Other vehicles must support the bombardment group during the battle. A bombardment group usually consists of other support vehicles, such as a Kemera as a command vehicle, a Kemera personnel carrier to transport gunners, a Trojan to transport ammunition, engineering sentries to provide additional support for reloading, a fire dragon to detect ahead, and an Atlas rescue tank to help in case a bombardment is paralyzed. Anyway, the Imperial Defense Siege Company is a small mixed force in its own right.

On Taros, only the 17th Corps of Talan was equipped with bombardment, and 6 vehicles were on standby during the battle. These heavy artillery pieces were originally intended as a reserve for the battle, as a secret weapon in the siege of Taroken. They were deployed in the rear of the assault force during the assault on Fira's high city, providing a constant support-type artillery bombardment. Exactly how much damage they inflicted on the Krut defenders is unknown, but all six bombardments were abandoned in the retreat of the Corps.

Imperial Guard artillery series

Griffons

The Gryphon is a shorter siege gun than the Petrified Lizard and Medusa, and its main gun is a large-caliber mortar. This mortar is capable of supporting infantry sieges, injuring enemies by throwing shells into enemy walls during sieges.

The Gryphon is not favored by most Imperial Defense artillery commanders due to its lack of firepower and range, its heavy mortars are too heavy for small infantry to carry, and it lacks mobility, but it is not a great deterrent for armored vehicles. As a vehicle-mounted weapon, the Gryphon needs to be effective only when it has the fire control and reconnaissance capabilities that can only be given by large artillery companies. Because of these shortcomings, the commanders have come to treat it as an antiquity. Their losses are no longer filled, and the various casting worlds have reduced their productivity. The griffons look like they're going to be extinct soon.

Despite all its shortcomings, the Gryphon still has its own unique advantages over other heavy artillery, making it a powerful weapon when properly deployed. It is the lightest artillery gun in the Imperial Guard, making it an ideal combination of weight, maneuverability, firepower and ease of use. It is capable of maintaining a relatively high firepower against light vehicles and enemy infantry, which frees up other heavy artillery to deal with more solid targets. When used properly, it is both a defensive tool and an assault sword. At the same time, the ability to use a wide range of ammunition also implies a variety of tactical forms.

The Gryphon mortar is capable of using a wide range of shells, including standard high-explosive warheads, smoke grenades, flares and siege shells. The use of mortars to fire siege bombs means that when the fuse is properly designed, the ultra-high arc allows it to penetrate into the ground to a certain depth before exploding. Although this reduces the power against infantry, it will collapse instantaneously when hitting the foundation of a building.

Like petrified lizards, griffons are four-person crews; The driver and commander were in the front of the car, and the gunner and loader fought in the rear.

During the Battle of Talos, many Imperial Defense forces still used a large number of griffons to provide more powerful fire support for the front-line infantry. The griffons of the 114 Corps of the Kadian Corps provided important support during the corps' breakthrough into the liberation of hydroelectric power stations 23-30. The Legion's Petrified Lizards were too slow to keep up with the rapid advance of the troops, so the Griffons became the only artillery support unit of the Corps.

Imperial Guard artillery series

Manticore

Of all the armed forces of the Empire, the Imperial Defense Army has the heaviest and most powerful artillery units. When there are enemy cities or fortresses, they are always the first to come to mind by the generals of the Imperial Guard. The Imperial Guard, armed with earth-shaking cannons, Medusa, griffins, bombardments, and manticores, is capable of destroying any walls, fortresses, and ravines they want to destroy. There was an old saying among the artillery officers of the Imperial Defense Forces: "Infantry conquers the line of fire, tanks win battles, artillery wins wars." "Artillery is the king of the battlefield. Without every heavy artillery bombardment, the advance of tanks and infantry would be nothing more than empty words.

By far the most common artillery pieces are the Petrified Lizard and the Earth-Shaking Cannon. But now, a rare type of multiple maneuvering rocket vehicle based on the Kemera chassis, the Manticore, began to gradually join the Imperial Defense Forces. The biggest feature of the Manticore over other artillery pieces is its versatility. The Manticore launcher is capable of launching a wide range of rockets, from standard high-explosive fragmentation warheads to phosphorus oxide incendiary warheads, from poison gas bombs to high-altitude anti-aircraft missiles. Compared to the Earth-Shaking Cannon, the Manticore is a high-end piece of equipment that takes the functions of a short-frequency communication system, gyroscope, and radar tracking to the extreme.

Each Manticore missile is divided into five parts: a fuse, a control guidance device, electronic components, a high-explosive warhead and fuel tanks. Each missile is propelled by a two-stage solid-fuel rocket, consisting of a trigger rocket and a main flight stage rocket. It was able to reach a speed of 300 meters per second when it was first launched. However, the limitation of the number of missiles means that the main means of artillery attack on the battlefield is still the old-fashioned trigger-fire type of the petrified lizard.

The commanders of the Imperial Defense Force discovered the versatility of the Manticore. It can fill the gap of any other vehicle, it is a Hydra with an anti-aircraft missile, it is a super anti-infantry weapon with an incendiary bomb, and it can deal with enemy armor clusters with a high-explosive warhead.